{"id":291,"date":"2018-06-11T13:37:35","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T13:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/104.131.100.132\/?p=291"},"modified":"2025-03-10T14:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T14:02:11","slug":"journey-writing-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewriteplacerighttime.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/11\/journey-writing-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Journey Over the Rainbow: Getting to my Pot of Writing Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t

Lets assume you read the first post (Just Another Writer). If not, stop reading this right now. Go back and read the other one<\/a>.\u00a0 Then you’re welcomed to join us here. Here we are talking about this journey I’ve been on.<\/p>\n

Just kidding. You don’t have to go back. Stay with me.<\/p>\n

If you didn’t read the first post, here is the gist: I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Now I am one.\u00a0Even though it just makes me another person a part of the mass of people who self-identify as a writer and are also on this journey. (Insert audience applause or booing. Whichever strikes you. Don’t much care either way because I can’t hear you. So if you’re a hater – go on and hate. I’m not listening.)<\/p>\n

Becoming a writer has been a long time coming. As a child I filled journals with stories, often coming up with a full storylines based solely on the image on the cover of the journal. One journal had a soft purple cover with a picture of a Unicorn. (There may have even been a rainbow in the background- ironically.) And it was the only time – ever – that I attempted writing fantasy.<\/p>\n

\"journey
See what I mean? Roses on the front and the title has ‘roses’ in it. Very original. (Not.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When we (my family) got our first computer in the house, I started typing my novels in DOS. I can still remember the way the cursor blinked on the blue screen as I typed each new letter. And then I would print them, rip off the perforated sides of the paper, and bind them in a folder with fasteners. The closer I could get to making my books look like actual books the better.<\/p>\n

\"writing
Yup. I started buying those folders with the metal fasteners in them so my books would be “bound.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In middle school, I wrote YA novels and handed them out to friends and they would read them and pass them on to someone else. In high school, it tapered off, though I still dreamed of my “Someday, somewhere over the rainbow” I would be a writer.<\/p>\n

I went to undergrad and one of my majors was in Creative Writing. I got my B.A. in 2007.\u00a0 One step toward becoming a writer. Then I went to grad school and despite starting off in a different masters program, I switched to an M.F.A. Program<\/a>. I ended up with an M.F.A. In 2010. Another step toward becoming a writer.<\/p>\n

Since then it’s been this off-and-on struggle to make this lifelong dream a reality. I’ve been on the journey the entire time, but with lots of missteps and wrongfully taken paths or distractions.<\/p>\n

(I know you’re thinking, how can there be wrongfully taken paths on a rainbow- isn’t there like only one path and direction you can go? Look, rainbows are a A LOT wider than you would think and all those colors can be confusing and blinding. So don’t judge me for poor sense of direction sometimes on this journey.)<\/p>\n

So here I am in my early thirties. (Again, for those of you who didn’t read the first post and already know this.) I know a lot of writers who didn’t get around to making their writing a priority until much later in life. I’m not saying that to toot my own horn. I’m saying it to:<\/p>\n1. Prevent those people who are older than me and reading this from saying “Oh, please, child, don’t be so dramatic. Took me xxx years to get this far.”
\na. Yes, I assumed there would be some who would judge me
\ni. Why did I assume this?\n